


Ml 



H//20 u;as Thomas Jefferson? 



ADDRESS 
delivered before the 



Virginia State Bar Association 

Jlugust 12th, 1909 



BY 



WILLIAM M. THORNTON, IJL. D., 

Professor of Applied Mathematics, and 
Dean of the Department of Engi- 
neering in the University 
of Virginia 



Richmond Press, Inc. 




Qass_Li 






Book U5( 



Who was Thomas Jeff erson? 



ADDRESS 
delivered before the 



Virginia State Bar Association 

Jugust 1 2 th, 1909 



BY 



WILLIAM M. THORNTON, LL. D., 

Professor of Applied Mathematics, and 
Dean of the Department of Engi- 
neering in the University 
of "Oirginia 



Copyright, 1909, by William M. Thornton. 



©CI.A253485 



Who Was Thomas Jefferson ? 

By WILLIAM M. THORNTON, LL. D. 

(Copyrighted.) 



"If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. 
If America is right, Jefferson was right." 

Parton. 

One hundred and sixty-six years ago there was born at the 
foot of Monticello Mountain in Virginia the great apostle of 
American Democracy, Thomas Jefferson. Eighty-three years 
later he died on the submit of that mountain after a life 
crowded with unselfish labors for his fellow-countrymen, 
crowned with achievements unparalleled for number and for 
weight, and consecrated through all its busy years to the 
noblest ideals of public service. Eighty-three years again 
have passed, and we may well gather here to review those 
labors, to evaluate those achievements, to renew our devotion 
to those ideals in virtue of which "Thomas Jefferson still 
survives." 

He who ventures on such an essay may well stand abashed 
before his task. The theme is too vast, too extended. The 
fourscore and three years of Thomas Jefferson's life were, 
it is true, bound together into one splendid concord of high 
endeavour. Yet he touched our national life to nobler issues 
at so many points, that in the brief compass of such an address 
as this the mere enumeration of his services to his country 
would be impracticable. Let us rather strive to discover the 
man in his works, to reveal the wellspring of his moral energy, 
to disclose the method of his strangely varied activities. 

Who then was Thomas Jefferson ? Of whom was he born 
and what was his descent? Into what sort of a community 
did he come? What influences moulded that penetrating 
genius, that capacious brain, that ardent soul, during the 
plastic years of childhood and youth ? 



PARENTAGE. 

Imagine a vast belt of primeval forest, stretching from the 
upper limit of tidewater in Virginia back to the crest line of 
the Blue Ridge, a region which was still the hunting ground 
of Indians, where no axe had been heard, where no plough 
had yet been seen. Parts of this wonderful forest stand to-day 
and the people who dwell among them call them the Tall- 
woods, from the soaring height of the great trees which un- 
violated nature has nursed into a divine dignity and beauty. 
Virginia had been settled about a century before Governor 
Spottswood with his "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe" made 
their jovial expedition through this forest to the azure sum- 
mits of that great mountain chain. 

Ten years later (about 1727), the lands of Tidewater Vir- 
ginia having been all taken up, patents began to be issued 
for these lands in the Piedmont. At first the great gentlemen 
of the Colony took out such patents for large tracts as a hope- 
ful speculation: Nicholas Meriwether for 18,000 acres, Sec- 
retary John Carter for 9,300, Francis Eppes for 6,400, and so 
on. A tenant or two came up to make a clearing and validate 
the title, but these old Virginian aristocrats were too com- 
fortable and happy on their big plantations to go out into the 
wilderness and give the Indians a chance at their scalps. 

By 1732, however, bona fide settlers began to come in. They 
followed the river-valleys, first the James itself, then its 
various tributaries, bringing axes and the tools of carpentry 
and husbandry and a few slaves. They felled the stately 
trees, whipsawed the logs into planks, split the butts into 
shingles, built themselves houses, cleared a few fields and 
settled down to create a commonwealth. 

To the place where the Rivanna, one of the tributaries of 
the James, breaks through the Southwest mountains — an ir- 
regular chain of rugged hills parallel to the Blue Ridge — 
came in 1735 one Peter Jefferson. Some trace his blood 



back to that Jefferson who in 1G19 sat in the choir of 
the little church at Jamestown and with his fellow-ourgesses 
then and there planted the tree of representative government 
in America. It seems not unfitting that Thomas Jefferson 
and the Declaration of American Independence should spring 
from such a stock. But of this, there is no clear evidence 
and for us it matters not. Our business is with Peter. 

A man in all the noble senses of that noble word — a stalwart 
frame, a giant's strength, unflagging industry, unflinching en- 
durance, indomitable courage, a perfect honesty — a massive, 
steady, silent, trusty, calm, foreseeing man. He could head 
up two hogshead of tobacco at once, weighing about a thousand 
pounds apiece, one with either hand. With Professor Joshua 
Fry, of William and Mary College, he surveyed the boundary 
between Virginia and Itforth Carolina from the point where 
Colonel Byrd's line had ended, through a wilderness of wild 
beasts and Indians; he wearied out all his corps and leaving 
them scattered along the line pushed on; he ate up all his 
food, killed his mule, loaded the flesh on his own back and still 
pushed on; sleeping in hollow trees at night, to guard against 
ravening beasts, cutting his way by day through untamed 
forests, he still pushed on and blazed out the line, paced the 
distances, took the bearings, and came back safe and sound 
with his survey done. Such a man was our Peter — a rock on 
whom God might well build a State as on another He built a 
church. 

Peter has been called a plebeian by people who were not 
ashamed to express thus their enmity to his illustrious son. 
He was a plebeian whose ancestor perhaps sat in the first 
representative assembly in America ; who was the colonel of 
his county and held back the hostile Indians from her borders; 
who was the local magistrate and a vestryman of his church; 
who represented his people in the Virginian House of Bur- 
gesses; who was the chosen associate of a certain learned Wil- 
liam and Mary Professor in the earliest State surveys; who 



6 

loved his Shakespeare and his Addison, his Swift and his 
Pope; who was the bosom friend of a Randolph and became 
his executor and the guardian of his only son; who married 
the daughter of the proudest of all the Virginian gentry; who 
was trusted and honoured alike by Indian chieftains and by 
Virginian gentlemen. Such a plebeian as Peter is a good 
enough aristocrat for me. Men have called Peter Jefferson a 
plebeian, just as they have called Luther an apostate and Lee 
a traitor. Well were it for this world of ours if theie were 
more like them. 

Let us turn our eyes now to another scene in the Old Do- 
minion. It is the home of one of the great tobacco-lords of 
the Colony, Isham Randolph, third child of the William Ran- 
dolph who settled on the James below Richmond, at Turkey 
Island, in 1660, and founded one of the great Virginian 
houses of the olden time. They were aristocratic folk — the 
Randolphs, tracing their lineage back to the Scotch Earls of 
Murray, the Ishams being English baronets. Isham Randolph 
himself is described by the botanist Bartram as a "generous, 
good-natured gentleman, well respected by most who are ac- 
quainted with him." He had a great house at Dungenes3 on 
the James above Richmond, and big plantations there and else- 
where. About this mansion it is said a hundred servants 
waited. He was the friend and correspondent of men of 
science in London as well as in America, and Bartram's in- 
troduction came to him from Peter Collinson, an English 
botanist, who warns Bartram as to his attire when he shall go 
to visit at Dungeness. Collinson, who was a dealer in woolen 
cloths, and had sent Bartram as a gift stuff for a suit, writes 
as follows: 

"One thing I must desire of thee, and do in- 
sist that thee oblige me therein ; that thee make 
up that drugget clothes to go to Virginia in and 
not appear to disgrace thyself or me. For though 



I should not esteem thee less to come to me 
in what dress thou will, jet these Virginians 
are a very gentle, well dressed people, and look 
perhaps more at a man's outside than his inside. 
For these and other reasons pray go very clean, 
neat, and handsomely dressed to Virginia." 

Into this stately home of "very gentle, well dressed peo- 
ple" our so-called plebeian Peter Jefferson was introduced by 
his friend, William Randolph, nephew of the host. The old- 
est child was a daughter, Jane, born in London in the parish 
of Shadwell, which had been her mother's home. Peter saw 
Jane, a girl of seventeen, lively and lovable, and loved her; 
and Jane, Desdemona like, conquered by tales of strength ami 
fortitude told about that silent wooer from the back-woods, 
let her heart go out to Peter, and soon they were betrothed. 
Then it was that Peter Jefferson began his home-building 
at the foot of Monticello. William Randolph celebrated his 
own joy at the betrothal of his cousin to his friend by selling 
him four hundred additional acres adjoining his own tract of 
a thousand acres, the price named in the deed being "Henry 
Weathersbourne's biggest bowl of arrack punch." On this 
land Peter Jefferson built his home, a house like many an- 
other of that early day — a story and a half, four rooms to the 
floor, plain and big and comfortable — and then when all was 
ready he went back to Dungeness and brought home his bride. 
In her honour he called the place Shadwell. On it she lived 
all the residue of her days, as wife until Peter's sudden death 
in 1757, as widow until 1776. In 1770 the home was burned 
to the ground with all its contents, save young Tom's fiddle, 
but Mrs. Jefferson only moved over into an overseer's house. 
Thomas was the third of ten children born in the Shadwell 
home. While he loved and honoured his mother, he gave 
to the father whom he lost so early his peculiar devotion. To 
the end of life he never wearied of paying tribute to that 
father's far-seeing wisdom and affection. 



SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. 

Thomas Jefferson was fourteen years old when his father 
died and left him to be the heir of his fortune and the head 
of his family. Guardians were appointed for the lad — first 
Mr. John Harvey, and after his death Dr. Thomas Walker — 
but young Jefferson was so manly, so clever, so dependable, 
that the guardians let him go his own gait. He was a tali 
fellow, growing in the end to be six feet two inches, and in 
muscular strength and activity he surpassed all his companions. 
He had huge hands and feet, red hair, a reddish skin, a freckled 
face, high cheek-bones and a projecting chin. In youth ugly, 
at maturity he had acquired a pleasing person and in old age 
he came to be a handsome man. His eyes were hazel grey, 
his teeth perfect, his countenance bright and expressive. His 
manner was shy and cold, until acquaintance melted away re- 
serve, and then became most sweet and engaging. He was 
always even in boyhood a fine horseman, a dead shot, a prac- 
tised swimmer, a good dancer, a clever fiddler. His father had 
seen to it that he had good teachers, first Rev. William Doug- 
lass, and after that Rev. James Maury; the latter especially 
a broad minded man of genuine scholarship and high feeling. 
Under these instructors he learned his Latin and his Greek 
well, together with the principles of numerical arithmetic, 
and by the end of 1759 he came to feel that he was ready 
for college. In 1760 with Ids guardian's consent he was entered 
with advanced standing at William and Mary; in December, 
1762, he had been graduated from the college, had been ad- 
mitted as a law student to the office of George Wythe, and was 
headed for Shadwell with "Coke-upon-Lyttleton" in his trunk. 

It was on his journey to William and Mary and during his 
residence there, that Jefferson first felt in its fullness the 
vivid warmth and charm of the aristocratic life of old Vir- 
ginia. His mother's kinsfolk grasped their young kinsman's 
hand and drew him cordially into the charming circle of their 



intimate friendship. Plis favorite professor, Dr. Small, the ac- 
knowledged center of intellectual force in the faculty at Wil- 
liamsburg, won by the country lad's sweet manliness and quick 
intelligence, made of this beloved pupil the chosen companion of 
his leisure hours, introduced him to the notice and hospitality 
of the Royal Governor — the elegant, accomplished, brilliant, 
and generous Fauquier — and laid for him the foundation of a 
lifelong friendship with George Wythe, the great Virginian 
jurist. Jefferson called the Colonial Governor Fauquier "the 
ablest man who ever filled that office," and tells how much he 
owed of stimulus and instruction to constant association with 
these eminent men as they gathered day by day around the 
Royal Governor's "familiar table." On the other hand our 
young heir saw all the other phases of his novel life. William 
and Mary drew within her walls men like Thomas Jefferson 
and John Page; but she also had her full contingent of cocky 
young aristocrats with well lined pockets and empty heads ; 
while the Governor's Court drew to Williamsburg all the gran- 
dees and all the debauchees of the Colony. On his own admission 
our Thomas was not unacquainted with horse races and cock 
fights, with card players and fox-hunters. In his first year he 
kept a few fine horses of his own and spent a trifle of money. 
But after that he settled down to hard work, varied by an 
occasional dance in the Apollo room with some beaatv of the 
Court or an evening of music at the Governor's palace. So 
it was that she whom he named "the fair Belinda" — Mistress 
Rebecca Burwell — enslaved his young heart and gave him to 
drink of the wholesome bitter of disappointed affection. But 
through it all Jefferson remained the clear-souled, warm-hearted 
country boy. Fauquier was an inveterate gambler, but Jeffer- 
son never touched a card. Cousin Randolph or Cousin Oary 
might in the polite colonial phrase become "disguised with 
drink," but Jefferson stuck through all his youth to plain 
water. So he remained to the end of his days — temperate 
and clean beyond the common wont of men. The shameful 



10 

accusations brought by his political adversaries against his 
private life at a later date have been proved to be absolutely 
without foundation.* Through all the fourscore and three 
years of his life no vulgar amour, no vinous debauch, no fever 
of the card table ever smirched the fair fame of Thomas Jef- 
ferson. 

And now I think we may begin our answer to the question 
with which we set out — Who was Thomas Jefferson ? He was 
a man in whose veins mingled the two streams of blood which 
united have in all ages given to humanity its prophets and its 
priests and its kings, the plebeian red of Peter and the aristo- 
cratic blue of Jane; the progeny of manly force and womanly 
sweetness, of virile energy and feminine refinement. From 
the father came the big bones and hard muscles, the hunter's 
eye and the horseman's grip, the clear head and the steady 
poise, the love for science and for the outdoor life. From the 
mother came that suavity of address and sympathy of attention 
which made him so irresistible in private conference; that 
fluent style with either tongue or pen; that warmth of heart 
which beautified every hour of his domestic life; that tender- 
ness of spirit, which made him mother as well as father to 
his orphaned daughters and called forth from their young 
hearts a mingled stream of adoring reverence and trustful love. 

He was a man trained in both the great gymnasia of modern 
civilization — the country and the town. In his affluent but 
simple Albemarle home there came to him all the pleasures 
and the disciplines of rural life — hunting and fishing and 
swimming and riding; music and dancing and school and 
study ; the unaffected courtesies of good neighborhood ; the sim- 
ple reverence of the old time religious faith; the social frank- 
ness of democratic equality. In Jefferson's boyhood not one 
of the great Virginian families had moved into Albemarle. 



♦In questions of paternity the testimonies of date and place are irre- 
futable. 



11 

His neighbors were all men like his father; and his father 
led, not by virtue of a social tradition, but by the unaided 
force of character and intellect, by a big heart and a big brain. 
Peter was a Democrat and Thomas was born into Democracy. 
Presently he found that this gymnasium had given him its 
best and he left it for Willi ambsurg; for the college and his 
beloved professor, Dr. Small, learned and liberal and cultured 
and wise, for the Governor's palace and the society of the bril- 
liant, witty, generous, sceptical Fauquier; for the houses of 
his kinsfolk on the spindle side, great tobacco lords, horsemen, 
fox-hunters, orators, politicians, dandies, debauchees, belles and 
flirts. All taught him something- with a quite beautiful loy- 
alty and lovingness he writes many years afterwards that it 
was Dr. Small who "probably fixed the destinies of my life." 
Even Rebecca Burwell had her little lesson for him. But 
after all these lessons he turned back and said that the earliest 
lesson was the best. He tells us that he set himself down de- 
liberately to ask, Which shall it be? Horseman? fox-hunter? 

orator ? or to use his own noble phrase : 

< 

"Honest advocate of my country's rights" ? 

The answer was never doubtful; old Peter's blood, old 
Peter's training, old Peter's tradition was too strong, and 
Thomas Jefferson sits among the immortals because he made 
himself just that — an honest advocate of his country's rights. 

Once more, Thomas Jefferson, college graduate, had in his 
hands the keys at least to all the learning of his time. He 
had come to William and Mary from the hands of Maury, 
well grounded in Greek and Latin ; and at the college he had 
built on this foundation so well that these early friends to 
the life of the spirit never forsook him. He read Latin and 
he read Greek freely and fluently down to his very last year; 
not in the prideful pose of a devotee of culture; not with 
the meticulous care of the modern philologian; but out of his 



12 

love for the beauty expressed by those old masters in the realm 
of thought and for the comfort of their wisdom and for the 
uplift of their lofty spirits. He fell into a blunder now and 
then, but he read on and loved them still. He added to this 
while at the college an effectual reading-knowledge of Fre^nh, 
developed later during his Parisian residence into a speaking 
knowledge of the same tongue; and by private study in after 
life he gained a certain mastery of Italian and Spanish and a 
trifle of German. Under the powerful stimulus of Dr. Small's 
genius he learned to love mathematics and the natural sci- 
ences, although the practical bent of his own nature led him 
invariably to their applied forms; and it may have been from 
the same source that he received that impulse to the archi- 
tectural studies which have left on American taste and tradition 
a stamp so beautiful and clear and ineffaceable. If we may 
trust his own auto-psychology, music and mathematics and 
architecture became at this time the "passions of his soul.'' 
If I may trust my own reading of his story I should say 
that politics was his legal wife ; law her trusted handmaid ; 
and music, mathematics and architecture three beautiful 
Geisha girls, kept for the solace of his leisure hours. Better 
than all this for him was it that he learned from scientific 
Small the true method of the scholar and so learned it that he 
applied this method to all the future problems of life. One ex- 
ample out of many must suffice. In his early studies of the 
law he found it laid down as the doctrine of the courts that 
"Christianity is parcel of the laws of England." This our 
young student, knowing the historic evolution of the Common 
Law, could not believe. He pushed his studies back, back 
through Coke-upon-Lyttleton, back through Henry Brackton, 
back to the laws of Alfred the Great. He discovered the 
source of the suspected error in a mistranslation of Prisot, 
where ancien scripture is rendered Holy Scriptures. He proved 
that ancien scripture meant just what it appears to mean, the 
old records of the courts, and nothing more. At once and 



13 

forever our young Virginian, exploded a legal fallacy sup- 
ported by such great authorities as Sir Matthew Hale, Sir 
William Blackstone, and Lord Mansfield. Long years before 
the modern slang about "die Quellen" was ever heard, Thomas 
Jefferson had traced the way of the scholar back to the ultimate 
sources of scholarship. 

If then we ask ourselves, who was Thomas Jefferson, we 
must say that he was a young Virginian in whose veins ran 
the united streams of the blood of the democrat and the blood 
of the aristocrat, no longer discordant, but beating in one deep, 
harmonious, sympathetic pulse ; in whose training the noblest 
influences of the rural life and the urban life had worked 
together to produce a vigorous and healthy body, a clear and 
disciplined mind, a sweet and unspoiled heart ; for whose in- 
struction the stores of ancient learning and of modern science 
had been both unlocked to a native genius which found in 
them its fit and proper food, and built out of them some of 
the great landmarks of our American civilization. Such 
was Jefferson the youth ; what of Jefferson the man ? 

LAWYER JEFFERSON. 

We left our young Jefferson homeward bound with Coke-up- 
on-Lyttleton in his trunk. Youth of the present day with one- 
tenth of his training and one-thousandth of his genius give two 
or at most three years to the study of thedaw. His friend Pat- 
rick Henry with no training and divine genius gave it six weeks. 
Jefferson working under the personal tuition of a great jurist 
and matchless teacher gave it five years. In these years he 
covered, however, a vast range of collateral knowledge, dug 
his way back into the very foundations of the Common Law, 
and made himself familiar with the Statute Law of England 
and of Virginia. He was not admitted to the Bar until April, 
1767, but then soon took rank with the most erudite and the 
most, successful lawyers of the Colony. His clients were 



14 



numerous and many of them wealthy and of the highest social 
rank. His professional income was for that age a large one, 
averaging for the seven years of his active practive (1767- 
1774) three thousand dollars a year. Out of the profits of 
his office he increased his patrimonial estate from 1,900 to 
5,000 acres, supported the large family of his widowed mother, 
provided for the marriages of his sisters, Martha and Lucy, 
and m'ade some headway on the creation of that home upon 
the summit of Monticello, whose appealing loveliness seems 
still to whisper the secrets of the master's deepest soul. 

The active days and busy nights of this successful lawyer 
were not given wholly to money getting. The abstruser studies 
of legal science still claimed their share of his love and de- 
votion. The early Virginian statutes existed in manuscript 
only. ISJo files had been preserved in the government archives. 
We are in debt to Jefferson for the rescue of these precious 
documents of our earliest history and laws. Some of the 
copies recovered by him were unique; some rotten and ob- 
scure from age; some actually perished in the exposure neces- 
sary for the transcription. If posterity owes to Jefferson its 
undying thanks for these patriotic labors, Jefferson himseif 
drew from them that peculiar and intimate knowledge of the 
political institutions developed through the long struggle for 
freedom in England and transplanted by Englishmen to the 
shores of the new world, which made him in the troubled years 
approaching the greatest and most powerful advocate of his 
country's rights. 

The ten years of this period developed Jefferson in other 
aspects of his rich and complex nature. The purest and sweet- 
est friendship of a life singularly rich in genuine friendships 
shed its perfume over them. Dabney Carr, his boyhood's 
mate, his sister Martha's husband from 1765 to 1775, growing 
day by day into a companionship and love closer than brother- 
hood itself, was torn away by death while the eloquent echoes 
of Carr's maiden speech still floated on the Virginian air. 



15 

Jefferson at once took charge of Carr's widow, supported and 
educated and launched in life all his six children, loving his 
sister the more tenderly for her sorrow and Carr's offspring 
as his own. The ashes of the two friends to-day mingle be- 
neath the oaks of Monticello. 

If there be an earthly relationship between man and woman, 
which has in it somewhat of angelical sanctity and sweetness, 
it is that between a lovely and loving sister and a devoted 
and high-minded brother. Free from the fetter of depend- 
ence, passionless and pure and holy, alike intimate and affec- 
tionate, compact of loyalty and sacred faith, it rings sound 
and true in every earthly trial as in every earthly joy. It 
alone of all human loves may dare to pass unpurged and un- 
challenged beyond the gate of paradise. Such a sister was Jane 
Jefferson, such a brother was Thomas. His peer in intellect, 
his rival only in their mutual devotion, the confidante of all 
his early ambitions and his early loves, warm with the fervor 
of deep religious feeling, gifted with a voice of rare sweet- 
ness and exquisite skill, she lives for us in the tradition of 
their music, when her harpsichord and Jefferson's violin ac- 
companied their youthful voices in tender ballad or in sacred 
chant. This tie, too, death was to sever; the autumn leaves of 
17G5 hid with their golden glories the sister's new-made grave. 
Jefferson never forgot her; even in his old age the chanted 
liturgy of the church would bring back to him that sacred and 
beloved image, and he would tell over to his grand-daughters 
the story of her tenderness and her truth. 

One other link in the chain of life was forged for Jefferson 
in these same days. Those first love passages with Rebecca 
Burwell now sounded through his dreams like far distant 
echoes of an earlier life. The sprightly Hebecca had with 
delicious promptitude thrown Thomas over, and given her- 
self to his hated rival, when Thomas proposed to hang her up 
to dry, while he went a-touring for three years across the ocean. 
But this was ages, ago, as lovers count lime, seven Ion? years, 



16 

and Thomas now began to sit up and take notice. This time 
'twas not a maid but a widow ; not Rebecca but Martha. What 
fine, good-sounding names men's sweethearts had in those dis- 
tant davs ! But the gentle hand of the widow has not lost its 
cunning, whether her name be Mary, or Martha, or Gladys, 
or Gwendolen, and that hand will be always skilful in the 
nursing back to life of love-lorn swains. The time we are 
studying might indeed be fairly called the Widow's Age. Wash- 
ington married the Widow Custis; Jefferson married the 
Widow Skelton; Madison married the Widow Todd; Hamil- 
ton married a charming spinster, but (if we may trust tradition) 
loved widows in the plural. The catalogue of charming 
widows and illustrious lovers would be a long one. Jefferson's 
widow was musical, beautiful, twenty-two, and an heiress. 
They were married on the Xew Year's Day of 1772, journeyed 
homeward in a phaeton, were caught in a blinding snow-storm, 
mounted on their horses' backs and plodded up through three 
feet of suoav to the top of Monticello. It was after midnight 
when they reached their dwelling place and the servants de- 
spairing of their coming had gone to bed. But love, candles, 
a big fireplace soon filled with blazing hickory logs, a bottle of 
wine, a loaf of bread, laughter and song made it a happy 
home-coming, and for ten years this beautiful and gracious 
woman filled Jefferson's life with such happiness as only per- 
fect love and unalloyed tenderness can give to man. The 
love-light kindled that night upon his hearth-stone never grew 
dim. On his wife's death-bed he vowed to her that he would 
give her children no new mother, and for four and forty years 
he kept his vow. 

I have grouped together these sentimental episodes in Jeffer- 
son's life that we might feel their potency in the tempering of 
his character and the moulding of his life. His years of 
heart-happiness were the rich years of his constructive states- 
manship. If of all the great men of his epoch lie was the 
best endowed with patience and charity; if he alone among 



17 



them knew how to touch the souls of men with a man's firmness 
and a woman's gentleness; if his faith in the deep wellsprmgs 
of goodness and wisdom in his fellow-men never faltered; it 
was in large measure because his own heart, already formed by 
nature to love and to trust, had been nourished and strength- 
ened by these three perfect loves; the perfect friend, the per- 
fect sister, and the perfect wife. In men of supreme wisdom 
we find always united these two, the wisdom of the heart and 
the wisdom of the head. 

CONGRESSMAN" JEFFERSON. 

Jefferson's life enters now upon its period of noblest activ- 
ity, lie bad served in the House of Burgesses of 1769, dis- 
solved after five days by the Royal Governor on account of 
tLt-ir treasonable sentiments, and had participated in the 
Non-Importation Agreement, then promulgated as Virginia's re- 
ply to the tyrannical action of the king and the Parliament. 
Of the eighty-eight signers of this agreement Jefferson was one. 

In 1773 the House of Burgesses, exasperated still further 
by the encroachments of the crown, passed with practical un- 
animity the resolution creating the Committee of Correspond- 
ence, which should invite the appointment of a like committee 
in each of the other colonies and should take counsel with them 
on "various rumors and reports of proceedings tending to 
deprive his Majesty's faithful subjects of their ancient legal 
and constitutional rights." Jefferson drew the resolutions, 
Dabney Carr supported them with equal eloquence and force, 
and both Carr and Jefferson were named on the Virginian 
Committee. The Royal Governor again dissolved the House. 

In May, 1774, the Boston Port Bill precipitated Virginia 
into further defensive measures. The House of Burgesses re- 
solved that the first day of June, on which the bill was to go 
into eff< 'cl aid be set aside "for a day of fasting, humilia- 

tion and ,. layer, to implore heaven to avert from us the evils 



18 



of civil war." Jefferson drew the resolution, jNTicholas in- 
troduced it, and it passed without opposition. The Royal 
Governor again dissolved the House. The members met in 
the Apollo Room, instructed their Committee of Cor- 
respondence to ask for an Annual Congress of deputies from 
all the colonies and further called a Convention to meet in 
Williamsburg on August 1st to elect the Virginian members 
of the Congress. 

In August, 1774, the Convention met. Jefferson was de- 
tained by illness but sent two copies of a draft of instructions, 
such as he hoped to see given to the delegates to the Congress. 
This draft seemed too bold for the more conservative members. 
It was printed, however, as "A Summary View of the Rights 
of British America," was circulated through the colonies and 
sent to England. It was the first truly revolutionary paper 
issued by the American patriots, and was in fact the glowing I 
ingot from which was forged the Declaration of Independence. I 
The delegates to the Congress were elected and a new conven- 
tion called to meet in Richmond. 

On 20th March, 1775, the Richmond Convention assembled 
in St. John's church, Jefferson being one of the two delegates 
from Albemarle. It was here that Patrick Henry moved that 
the Colony "be immediately put into a state of defence" and 
after listening calmly to the earnest expostulations of almost 
every leading man in the Convention, supported his resolutions 
in an oration of such superhuman eloquence as men had never 
listened to before and never since have heard. The resolutions 
were passed by a decided majority, the Committee was ap- 
pointed to carry out their provisions, and on this Committee, 
Thomas Jefferson was placed. Before adjournment the dele- 
gates to the former Congress were re-elected; but as Peyton 
Randolph would probably be called back to Virginia to pre- 
side over the House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson was chosen 
as alternate in that event. The Convention adjourned 28th 
March, 1775. 



19 

On 1st June, 1775, the House of Burgesses assembled in 
Williamsburg. Thomas Jefferson, now a member of both the 
House and the Congress, was present and at the request of the 
Speaker delayed his departure until the reply of Virginia to 
the "Conciliatory proposition" of Lord North could be formu- 
lated. At the Speaker's request Jefferson drew the paper, 
which on 10th June, 1775, was accepted by the House. Jef- 
ferson at once set out for Philadelphia, carrying with him a 
copy of this spirited and unanswerable reply. He reached 
Philadelphia on 20th June, the day on which Washington 
received his commission from Congress. With a certain dra- 
matic fitness the news of Bunker Hill reached Philadelphia 
the next morning. 

On 21st June, 1775, Thomas Jefferson took his seat in 
Congress. John Adams records the fact that he brought with 
him a "reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent 
for composition. Though a silent member of Congress, he 
was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive upon committees 
and in conversation, that he soon seized upon my heart." Five 
days later he was placed upon the Committee to draw up for 
the united colonies a declaration of the causes of taking up 
arms. His paper was too radical in its statements for the more 
conservative members and was turned over by Jefferson to 
Dickinson for amendment. Dickinson made a new draft, into 
which he incorporated the last four and half paragraphs of 
Jefferson's paper. The document thus drawn was approved by 
the Committee, passed by Congress, and published to the world. 

On 22d July, 1775, the Congress took up the "Concilia- 
tory Proposition" of Lord North. A Committee was elected by 
ballot to draft their reply. Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and 
Lee constituted this Committee. The work was entrusted to 
Jefferson, who was known as the framer of the Virginian reso- 
lutions. This paper, which is wholly Jefferson's work, was 
adopted by Congress in the 31st July and on 1st August an 
adjournment was taken until 5th September following. Jeffer- 



20 



son returned to Virginia, was re-elected to Congress, 11th 
August, 1775, and spent the next eight months, partly in 
Philadelphia attending the sessions of Congress and partly 'n 
Virginia pressing forward the revolutionary movement among 
his own people. The loss of an infant daughter, September, 
1775, and of his mother, March, 1776, were grave additions 
to his public sorrows and his public cares. 

On 13th May, 1776, Jefferson was again in his seat in 
Congress. The Virginian Convention adopted their resolution 
in favor of American Independence on 15th May, 1776, and this 
was at once transmitted to the Virginian delegates in Con- 
gress. On 7th June, 1776, Kichard Henry Lee moved that 
Congress declare that "These United Colonies are and of 
right ought to be free and independent States." On 10th 
June, 1776, Congress appointed Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, 
Sherman and Livingston to draw up such a Declaration. The 
work was devolved on Jefferson, his draft was approved by the 
Committee, and on 28th June, 1776, was reported to Congress. 
It lay on the table until the appointed date, 1st July, 1776. It 
was then taken up. debated for four consecutive days, amended 
in sundry particulars, and finally passed on 4th July, 1776. 

The history of political development offers no parallel to 
this extraordinary catalogue of State papers of basic im- 
portance issuing from one brain within a period of two years. 
There were five of them, each a vital document for its time 
and a permanent addition to the literature of State-craft. 

(a) ,The Summary View of the Rights of British America. 

(b) The Reply of Virginia to the Conciliatory Proposition 
of Lord North. 

(c) The Congressional Declaration of the Causes of Taking 
up Arms. 

(d) The Reply of Congress to the Conciliatory Proposition 
of Lord North. 

(e) The Declaration of American Independence. 

Four of these were Jeffersonian in toto. and Jefferson fur- 



21 

nisbed the supremely significant sections of the other. They 
have been criticized for their rhetorical fervour, for the glow 
of passion which suffused them, for the deep undertone of a 
familiar and a common faith, which brought home their doc- 
trines to the hearts and souls of American patriots. That 
fervour was the flame which kindled into a blaze of invincible 
energy the dormant fires of resistence to tyranny. That pas- 
sion was the molten logic which taught Americans how to value 
truly their birthright of freedom. That faith in the bald com- 
monplaces of political oratory turned those dead bones of 
rhetoric into living engines of power and wrath. He who 
criticizes the Declaration of Independence as a web of familiar 
sophistries, would say that the diamond is a mere bit of char- 
coal, or that the pearl is nothing but the ooze and slime of the 
ocean. The Apostles' Creed contains nothing but what was 
familiar to the earliest Christians, and yet it has crystalized 
the articles of the Christian faith into precious and immortal 
forms. What the Apostles' Creed is to Christianity, that the 
Declaration of Independence is to Democracy. 

When we ask ourselves how Jefferson came to formulate 
these immortal postulates of his political faith, we can give no 
complete answer. Creative work, be it divine or human, has 
always been and will always be a beautiful and solemn mystery. 
We know not nor shall ever know how Homer sang his Iliad; 
how Shakespeare wrote his Hamlet; how Newton discovered 
his Law of Universal Gravitation ; how Watt invented his 
Steam Engine. 

So in our contemplation of Jefferson's creative work there 
must always remain a residuum of mystery. But we approx- 
imate a solution of the problem when we remember that here 
was a man who was born into a heritage of freedom ; who had 
learned the lesson of ordered liberty from his father's life : 
who had grown to man's estate in full view of two irreconcil- 
able ideals of citizenship, the democratic ideal, which was 
subduing the wilderness, and building homes, and creating a 



22 

commonwealth, and over against this the aristocratic ideal, 
which was already moribund in its self-gene rated sloth and de- 
bauchery and conceit; who having set before him two contrast 
ing models — brave old farmer Peter Jefferson and brilliant 
Royal Governor Fauquier — had resolved to follow the one and 
eschew the other; who had fitted himself for his destined work 
by patient years of profound study and earnest years of de- 
votion to his chosen profession ; who had read more profoundly i 
into the laws and institutions of the Anglo-Saxon race than J 
any living man; and whose native gift for love and sympathy 
and trust had been broadened and deepened by the richest ex- 
periences of human life. 

Thomas Jefferson early learned that he could never be an 
orator. JSTature had denied him the gift of eloquence. But 
■ for this parsimony she richly atoned. She gave him a broad, 
comprehensive, foreseeing mind'. She gave him a pen rarely 
equalled for facility and felicity and fluency. She gave him 
all the gentle arts of friendship, that other tongues might 
promulgate the thoughts of his teeming brain. She gave him 
the genuine spirit of sympathy, with the commoner rather than 
with the aristocrat, with the poor rather than with the rich, 
with the slave rather than with the master. This was the true 
secret of his power. His broad humanity was not a pose. His 
simplicity of attire, his plainness of manner was not a flout. 
His exquisite response to the deeper tones of popular con- 
viction was not an echo. In him the nobler aspirations of his 
fellow-men became articulate in yet nobler forms. Shams 
never gain permanent power; and Thomas Jefferson through 
the long years of a great public life was the foremost statesman 
of his time and the greatest party leader of all the ages. Under 
him the Democratic party in America attained a solidity, a 
unity, a force never since equalled, and attained it because their 
master and their mouth-piece had an abiding and an unshak- 
able faith in Democracy, because he was "not one of those, who 
fear the people." 



23 



JEFFERSON THE REFORMER. 



Oil 2d September, 1776, Jefferson resigned his seat in Con- 
gress, declining also the mission to France, left Philadelphia 
and turned his face homeward. Anxiety concerning the health 
of a beautiful, fragile and loving wife was cau.;e enough to 
draw the young statesman back to Virginia, now that his work 
in Congress had reached a culmination so glorious. The ap- 
proaching session of the Virginian Legislature, the first under 
the new State Constitution, gave added force to his desire to 
live and labour once more within the boundaries of his native 
State. He was at once chosen a delegate from Albemarle 
county and on 7th October, 1770, took his seat in the Legis- 
lature. 

The laws of Virginia, transferred from England to the 
Colony in an earlier and more cruel age, sorely needed revision. 
The great estates of the tobacco lords had been created and 
were unjustly protected under their malign influence; and 
the social order thus sustained was ready to perish from the 
vices always engendered by irresponsible power and protected 
wealth. The criminal code was inhuman and only its lax 
administration made life under it endurable. And the burden 
of the support of an established church fell with insulting 
force on the consciences of men who rejected its doctrines and 
righteously despised the great body of its priests. ISTo man felt 
more poignantly than Jefferson the need of amendment ; no 
man knew better than he how to carry out the work. 

Of the vast number of measures, in perfecting which he acted 
alone or took a leading part, it must here suffice to give only 
a condensed list of the most important. These are: 

•Ha) The establishment of new courts of Justice for the new 
State. 

(b) The abolition of the laws of entail. 

(c) abolition of the laws of primogeniture. 

(d) The restoration of Rights of Conscience in Religion. 



II 



24 

(e) The establishment of rights of Naturalization and Ex- 
patriation. 

(/) The abolition of the Slave Trade (passed in 1778). 

(g) The revision of the Laws; and in connection therewith 

(h) The establishment of Religious Freedom (passed in 
1786). 

(i) The creation of a System of Public Education, and 

(j) The gradual abolition of Slavery in Virginia. 

Jefferson's plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves 
was so hopeless of success that it was never even brought before 
the Legislature. He himself perceived that "the public mind 
would not bear it." With equal clearness he saw that unless 
some workable scheme of gradual emancipation were devised 
and adopted, the worst would follow. As the negroes increased, 
as the whole industrial system of the Slave States came to de- 
pend more and more on slave labour, the obstacles to any peace- 
ful solution of the problem grew and multiplied. Shortly 
after Jefferson's futile proposition was brought forward, Mon- 
roe could say., "It is easy enough to kill slavery, but what will 
you do with the corpse ?" The question confronts us to-day. 
Slavery is slain, but what are we to do with the corpse? Here 
it lies, stretched out from the Potomac to the Rio Grande in all 
its black, repellent bulk, and no man knows how or where to 
bury it. 

The bill creating a System of Public Education was post- 
poned until 1796 and then was passed only as to the Ele- 
mentary Schools. Even this act was rendered nugatory by a 
hostile amendment, which left compliance with the law to the 
option of the county courts. Thus after waiting twenty years 
Jefferson saw the one measure which he deemed the article of a | i 
standing or a falling democracy, defeated by a subterfuge; 
and needed to wait for another twenty years before he began 
to effectuate even a portion of that first capacious plan in 
creating a university for his native State. 

The other measures of fundamental import for the emancipa- 
tion of Virginia he carried through either then or soon after. 



25 

The lurid phrase which leaped from his pen amid the heats 
of his later conflicts, 



'// 



/ have sworn upon the altar of God eternal 
hostility against every form of tyranny over the 
mind of man," 



was but the morbid reflex of his saner mood in this great 
combat of his vibrant manhood. His assault upon the tyranny 
of the slave holder came to grief. His assault upon the tyranny 
of public illiteracy captured nothing but a watch-tower. Bat 
when the combat was over, the tyranny of cruel laws and 
savage penalties was gone from Virginia forever; the tyranny 
of a decadent caste, propped up against collapse only by the 
injustices of entail and primogeniture, was crushed ; and the 
tyranny of an established church had been replaced by the 
equality of all Christian brotherhoods in the eye of the law 
as in the eye of heaven. 

We cannot wonder that the Virginian aristocrats looked 
upon Jefferson as an enemy to his caste, as a traitor to his 
birth-right, and pursued him with hostilities and maledictions, 
down to the second and third generation. Nor can we feel 
surprise that the Episcopal clergy counted him among the 
deadly foes of that faith in which his ancestors had lived and 
in whose bosom he himself had been cradled. But it is strange 
that the dissenting clergy, the very men from whose limbs his 
hand had stricken off the shackles, should have united with the 
rest to revile him and to persecute him. In their homes and in 
their pulpits, in written document and public speech, they 
stigmatized as atheist and apostate, as sensualist and debauchee, 
this young ruler whom Jesus himself might have looked upon 
and loved. Not the least extraordinary outcome of all this 
animosity was his unbroken hold upon the great mass of his 
constituents. His profound conviction that the hope of Vir- 
ginia, of America, lay not in the aristocrat nor in the priest, 



26 



but in the thoughtful mass of his fellow-countrymen, penetrated 
their souls and in spite of defamation held for him the un- 
shakable citadel of their loyalty and their love. 

Passing over the record of Jefferson as Governor of Vir- 
ginia from 1779 to 1781, as not vitally connected with our 
immediate topic, we turn to his work in Congress, to which he 
was again elected in June 1783. Congress assembled at 
Trenton in November after the surrender of Cornwallis at 
Yorktown, 19th October, 1783, had practically closed the war. 
Thence they adjourned to Annapolis, and there it was Jef- 
ferson's privilege to arrange the noble ceremonial with which 
Congress received the resignation of \ the victorious Com- 
mander-in-Chief and to compose the address delivered by the 
President of the Congress on that occasion. He was chair- 
man also of the Congressional Committee which on behalf of 
the United Colonies signed the treaty of peace with Great 
Britian, in which was at last recognized that Independence 
which had been so eloquently declared by him in 1776. 

Only two bills of fundamental and permanent importance 
were passed by this Congress, notorious as the most con- 
tentious in our history. Both were drawn by Jefferson. One 
was the bill establishing our present system of Coinage and 
Currency on the decimal basis instead of the duodecimal basis 
recommended by the Financier of Congress, Robert Morris. 
The incomparable advantages of the decimal basis have been 
attested not only by the experience of America, but by the 
imitation of almost every civilized nation. 

The other bill was the Ordinance of the Northwestern Ter- 
ritory, establishing a plan of temporary government for this 
region, which Virginia with the consent and co-operation of the 
other States had ceded to the United States. The Jeffersonian 
bill was so drawn as to prohibit slavery after 1800 in all the 
region west of the meridian of the western cape of the mouth 
of the Great Kanawha. This provision was lost because only 
six of the States voted for it instead of seven. Had both the 



27 

delegates from New Jersey been in their places or had either 
one of Jefferson's own colleagues, Hardy and Mercer, sustained 
him, this clause would have been adopted and our great Civil 
War would never have been fought. Mr. Spaight, of North 
Carolina, deserves the unhappy fame of having compassed the 
defeat of this vital clause and brought upon his country the 
disastrous conflict over negro slavery. The later ordinance of 
1787, one of the immortal documents in our political history, 
made free soil of the Northwestern States alone. Jefferson's 
law would have secured freedom not for the Northwest only, 
but for Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, the en- 
tire Louisiana purchase, Texas and every State west of the 
Mississippi River. 

Jefferson had now reached the loftiest plane of his public 
career. His genius had blossomed into its consummate flower. 
His fertile and orginative mind had laid the broad and deep 
foundations of American Nationality and had transformed his 
native State from a mediaeval Colony into a modern Common- 
wealth. Virginia had received at his hands the triple crown 
of political freedom, of religious freedom, and of social free- 
dom, while from him the infant nation derived not only the 
power to grow but the law of her future expansion. The 
cession of the great Northwestern Territory to the general 
government and the law of its organization into new States was 
his work ; and this is the law, potent as the principle of universal 
gravitation, which has created and is creating a modern nation. 
Under its action the thirteen new stars which rose in the west- 
ern heavens in 1783 have grown into a great planetary system, 
in which each star sweeps through its own orbit, while all the 
stars march together in eternal union along one glorious and 
predestined path. 

If time permitted we might endeavour to complete the out- 
line of Jefferson's great public career. We should see his deep 
soul brooding over the problem of his country's future devel- 
opment, until his thought swept beyond the Mississippi aud 



28 



grasped the continental conception of her destiny; until the 
compulsive force of this vast ideal nerved him to brave- - 
since he could not bribe — the great Napoleon himself ; until the 
swift tides of European politics made of Napoleon's neces- 
sities Jefferson's allies and enabled him to pour the riches of 
Louisiana into the young Republic's lap. 

We should see him year after year planning to open up for 
American occupation the great unknown region which di- 
vided the United States from the Pacific; suggesting ex- 
plorations from the West as well as from the East ; until at last 
he was able to send on this task Meriwether Lewis, his former 
private secretary, and William Clarke, brother to George 
Rogers Clarke, who had conquered the Northwestern Terri- 
tory for Virginia. These bold pioneers, acting under Jeffer- 
son's commission, laid the foundation of our future successful 
claim upon the Oregon country. 

We should see him as Washington's Secretary of State 
brought into collision with the most powerful and alert of all 
his adversaries, Alexander Hamilton; the one with his birth- 
right in American soil, the other an alien serving an adopted 
country; the one a democrat with aristocrat lineage, the other 
a commoner with all the vacuous pride of a patrician; the one 
with his noble faith in the people, the other thinking of the 
mass as a vast, blind, raging Polyphemus, incapable of self- 
control and unfit to be intrusted with power. We should see 
Jefferson forced by this antagonism from his stand as an im- 
partial and far-seeing patriot into the position of the founder 
and leader of a great political party. We should see the 
final overthrow of Federalism, after Federalism had done its 
appointed work for the nation, and the establishment of Repre- 
sentative Democracy as the living principle of the future for 
the American Nation. 

We should see him in his brief retirement to Monticello, 
when wearied brain and tortured heart sank into the healing 
bath of quiet and peace and love. The serene skies of his 



29 



Virginian home bent their blue arch above him. The tender 
voices of his daughters and his grand-children caressed him 
into forgetfulness of the hatreds and turmoils of his storm-tossed 
years. From the shelves of his library, enriched by liberal 
purchases among the book-stalls of Paris, the sages and the 
saints of all the ages spoke their message of consolation and 
inspiration to his soul. It was this religious retreat into the 
sanctuary of his home which healed the wounds of his soul 
and made possible the triumphs of his later years. Even the 
duties of the Vice-Presidency did not remove him far or long 
from that best beloved of all the mountains of the earth. They 
served only to give him closer contact with the friends and 
allies of his public life. When by a "kind of miracle" — to 
use Hamilton's pungent phrase — John Adams was elected 
President, Jefferson rejoiced in his victory. He was a man 
careless of dignities, indifferent to profit, but avaricious of 
power. Under the stress of his conflict with Hamilton the 
postulates of Democracy had been exalted in his mind from 
the realm of reason into the realm of faith. They became his 
Articles of Religion, and the war against Federalism was a 
holy crusade. The Vice-Presidency was the commanding and 
impregnable citadel from which he conducted this war to 
complete and conclusive victory. 

And then we should see him exalted to the Presidential of- 
fice and preaching thence the simple evangel of Democracy by 
act as well as by voice and pen. In recent years contemporary 
documents have come to light that take the place of all those 
foolish inventions of political foes which made the vulgar 
gossip of alleged historians of the times. The dispatch of Dr. 
William Thornton, then in charge of the British Legation, t-j 
Lord Grenville in London, gives the authentic story of his 
inauguration. "Mr. Jefferson," he wrote, "came from his own 
lodging to the Capitol on foot, in his ordinary dress, escorted 
by a body of militia artillery from the neighboring State, and 
accompanied by the Secretaries of the Navy and the Treasury, 



? 



30 

and a number of his political friends in the House of Repre- 
sentatives." The inaugural address was delivered in the Sen- 
ate Chamber. The oath of office was administered by Chief 
Justice Marshall. Samuel Harrison Smith, the founder of the 
JNTational Intelligencer, in a private letter to his sister, dated 
5th July, 1801, gave an interesting account of Jefferson's 
first official reception. The guests, who included "all the public 
officers and most of the respectable citizens and strangers of 
distinction" were ushered into the room "w r here sat Mr. Jef- 
ferson surrounded by the five Cherokee Chiefs. After a con- 
versation of a few minutes he invited his guests into the usual 
dining-room, where four large side-boards were covered with 
refreshments, as cakes of various kinds, wine, punch, and so 
on. Every citizen was invited to partake. All appeared cheer- 
fully, all happy. Mr. Jefferson mingled promiscuously with 
the citizens, and far from designating any particular friend 
for consultation, conversed for a short time with every one 
who came in his way." In her private note-books written in 
1841, and not intended for publication, Mrs. Smith, who had 
been Margaret Bayard, of Delaware, and came thus originally 
from the very camp of his enemies, tells us something of Jef- 
ferson's attire and dress. "If Mr. Jefferson's dress was plain, 
unstudied, and sometimes old-fashioned in its form, it was 
always of the finest materials. In his personal habits he was 
always fastidiously neat; and if in his manner he was simple, 
affable and unceremonious, it was not because he was ignorant 
of, but because he despised the conventional and artificial 
usages of courts and fashionable life. His external appear- 
ance had no pretensions to elegance, but it was neither coarse 
nor awkward; and it must be owned his greatest personal 
attraction was a countenance beaming with benevolence and 
intelligence." Such cotemporary testimonials are the best 
refutation of all the stupid and malicious calumnies which once 
gathered about Jefferson's great name. His slovenly attire, his 
vulgar manners, his rude address, his dusky concubines, his 



31 

flouts at religion, his flatteries of the vulgar, all these were 
the cheap inventions of an ignoble political hostility. Once 
they did harm, to-day they are impotent. They simply pol- 
lute the pages on which Scandal masquerades as History. They 
are no longer able to shake the faith of mankind in the pre- 
valent virtue, the lofty genius, the broad benignity of the 
greatest statesman of the modern world. Well may we say 
with Parton, 

"If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. 
If America is right, Jefferson was right." 

Last of ail we should see Jefferson once more in retirement 
on his mountain home. The storms of politics rage about the 
levels beneath his feet, but he heeds them little. For around 
the head of this great, calm, foreseeing, deep-pondering man 
the serene heavens pour their radiant light. He sees that the 
great destiny of the nation he had aided to bring into being, 
whose infancy he had helped to foster, whose vigorous youth 
he had contributed to nurture and to train was in the safe- 
guard of that great power which guides the fortunes of men and 
of nations. His heart is at rest, his soul reposes in the confi- 
dence of a certain hope. And now he sets about the last work 
for his country's good that his hands were to find to do. He 
takes up again the problem of public education, which had oc- 
cupied his earliest days, and he builds for Virginia a State 
university, the first true university in America, the proto- 
type of all those great State schools and universities, which 
to-day bring their united energies to the work of exalting the 
intelligence and virtue and patriotism of our common country. 

The university which was Jefferson's ideal, the university 
which he strove to create, was a great democratic seminary, 
organized not for the advancement of learning, but for the 
training of men. Its product was to be not savants, but citi- 
zens. To his own university and to others like it, he looked 
for that gift of intellectual freedom which can alone make the 



DEC 27 



32 

Representative Democracy of America the ultimate solution 
of the great problem of State-craft. Slaves are unfit to govern 
either themselves or others, whether that slavery be of the 
body, or of the soul, or of the mind. Happy in all things, in} 
his death as in his life, the old man was given time to accom- 
plish this ultimate task and then lay down to rest. On the 
western slope of Monticello, facing the sunset glories of the 
region which his genius added to his country's domain, his 
ashes lie beneath the simple shaft on which stands the brief 
record of his wondrous life. He felt that heaven had granted 
him the grace to do for America three noble things — to achieve 
for bis people political freedom, to establish for his country 
religious freedom, and to organize the foundations of intel- 
lectual freedom, and so he wrote for himself this modest 
epitaph : 



Here was buried 

Thomas Jefferson 

Author 

of the Declaration of Independence 

of 

The Statute of Virginia 

for Religious Freedom and 

Father of the University 

of Virginia. 



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